Last week’s episode of Holland’s Got Talent featured one of those “contestant looks weird/ugly/nerdy/tough but sings like an angel” things that all singing shows do now. The contestant, a bespectacled man named Xiao Wang, walked out on stage and performed a really impressive rendition of “La donna è mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto that should have left the judges speechless. Except it didn’t. Instead, one judge, a local TV and radio personality named Cornelis Willem Heuckeroth, used it as an opportunity to dust off a book from 1955 titled Hilarious Oriental Jokes and guffaw his way through one after another. A sampling:

Did he say, “Which number are you singing, Number 39 with rice?” Yes, he did.

Did he say, “Honestly, this is the best Chinese I’ve had in weeks. And it’s not a takeaway.” Yup.

Did he interrupt a fellow judge who said Wang’s voice was a surprise to add “a suplise?” Yup yup yup.

The worst part came at the end, when one of Heuckeroth’s fellow judges informed him that he was “really not supposed to say things like that to people,” to which he replied “WHAT?” because he was either (a) too pleased with himself to hear the comment, or (b) genuinely shocked to find out that moments after another human’s triumphant moment might not be the best time to roll out your finest lazy, stereotype-based goofs about them. (See also.) Now, a number of people are calling for Simon Cowell — the top banana of the international Got Talent franchise — to fire him.

The lesson here, as it almost always is, is that you should try to not be the worst.

the thing about this is, it isn’t racism. the remarks are offensif, but he doesn’t think less of asian than other people. he just has a horrible sense of humor. It may look racist, it certainly is just retarded, but in holland people actually also look at context. and he also (again I totally don’t like the guy) knows intolerance, because he is one of the most famous gay persons in holland, although the netherlands being the first country to legalise gay marriage, it is less of a big deal. not that that has any relavance to wether he is racist or not.

I’m basically saying that saying offensive, racist things, doesn’t necasarrily make you racist, it doesn’t mean you are not a racist either, just a douchebag with a bad sense of humor.
@jesuswasaterrorist he makes those jokes quite often, so if you don’t say it to insult him personnally he probably would think it’s quite funny

Well, indeed I do not think the comments were Racist, but it was very very disrespectful and distasteful. As DAC said, Dutch are known for their tolerance for differences in race, color, language and religion. But every society has a nutcase…and here the nutcase happen to be the judge of a widely watched program. As a Dutch, I am ashamed of his comments.

To Dutch people, who are familiar with this guy and his demeanor, this isn’t really offensive, as this is his shtick. He’s been making jokes like this for decades. He’s ruthless, regardless of race, sexual orientation or whatever. If there’s a fat guy on the stage, he’ll joke about the guy’s weight. I highly doubt if his remarks were racist; I think these should be filed under “incredibly bad taste” rather than “racist”.

No, the joke itself doesn’t become less racist. However, I think that, because of the fact this guy has a long history of bad jokes and equally bad, I tend to hold him to a lower standard. And so do most Dutch people. Besides, he’s clearly not a racist. 3 out of his 5 cleaning ladies are Asian.

This contestant came to “Holland got talent” show, and he does not know a word in Dutch. How exactly does he belong to Holland? And how much respect does he show to the country where he lives without an attempt to learn native language? Analogy came expected, judges simply looked at him as at one of those foreign workers who comes to the country without bothering to learn language or show respect to native traditions. It has nothing to do with racism, I would call it natural reaction to disrespect. Do you remember any contestant on “America got talent” who would expect judges to speak other language to accommodate to the lack of English speaking skills? And how American judges usually react to contestants who speaks poor English? Interestingly, nobody calls them racists for that.

Hmmm,not helping Hollands case here.We got no talent-so we import it,we so cheap-we import it from China(Yeah I know,this 1 got some weird life of it’s own),it pissses us off so much we have draw attention to it by poking it.